THE OFFs Reggae-Punk CD

Featured in Search & Destroy #8, The OFFS pioneered ska-punk and introduced the saxophone playing of renowned Los Angeles Tattoo Artist Bob Roberts (Spotlight Tattoos). Sing along with their classic, memorable songs on this hard-to-find independently-produced CD.

The OFFS came to being when V. Vale brought together guitar player Billy Hawk and vocalist Don Vinil. They drew from rhythm & blues, soul, early German experimental music, dub, reggae and rock to create a dynamic new style. Billy Hawk was an old friend of Vale’s, and Don Vinil was in a previous band with Vale called Grand Mal, with Negative Trend guitarist Craig Gray from Canada.

1 review for THE OFFs Reggae-Punk CD

Rated 5 out of 5

Anonymous –July 16, 2013

The greatest thing about this San Francisco sextet when they would play Max’s Kansas City (they lived in New York on Prince Street for part of each year, and even released a single on the Max’s label) was how uncategorizable they were. Were they Punk? New Wave? Avant-garde? Art Rock? No New York noise? A new strain of Art Jazz? Some odd form of mutant-ska gone wrong with bleating sax? (Mostly.)

You never knew what to tell people about what you’d seen. Like their U.K. contemporaries, Blurt, they were sort of all these things, and still others we haven’t invented names for. But, what tied them to the Punk community (caffeinated singer Don Vinil, who sadly died of a heroin overdose here on 9th St. in 1983, was a close friend and friendly competitor of Jello Biafra in the old S.F. days when both bands started out together) was the basic burping energy to everything they did. These weren’t a bunch of art-school posers, they were smash-it-up party skanksters who wanted to do something fresh within an absolutely remarkably creative late ’70s Bay Area scene–in cahoots with Crime, Nuns, Avengers, Negative Trend, Flipper, Pink Section, Tuxedo Moon, Vktms, Mutants, Lewd, Dils, Zeros, and more. Tired of the same-old, same-old? These guys didn’t know what that was, and it really comes through again on this excellent-quality CD.